Untied.com has been a thorn in the side of United Airlines since 1997, exposing United's mistreatment of its passengers and employees alike. As a result, United is trying to shut down this website through legal action. If you support freedom of speech and the right to criticize a multi-billion dollar corporation, please help keep it alive by donating to my legal defense fund.

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As readers familiar with this website are well aware, United Airlines and its senior lawyers brought two parallel proceedings against me on November 19, 2012, in their effort to shut down this website.

At the last minute before trial in Quebec Superior Court, United offered to drop its SLAPP suit if I'd agree to remove the work contact information for some of its senior employees and henceforth, only provide passengers with a legal contact of United's own choosing. I refused, for reasons explained to the court in detail.

At trial, April 15-20, 2016, United maintained that:

One of its senior employees, whose own LinkedIn profile identifies him as "Managing Director, Customer Solutions" at United Airlines, has nothing to do with customer relations

United's senior legal counsel have nothing to do with passengers' legal claims, despite evidence to the contrary, as well as the ironic example of Brett Hart, United's General Counsel, who was responsible for Customer Care, and

the mere fact that these lawyers receive, on average, one email per day and one voice mail per week from passengers or attorneys, constitutes "a flood of harassment" that necessitated United's lawsuit against Cooperstock

As remedy, United was seeking an injunction that would order me "to refrain from ever posting the names and contact information of any of Airline Plaintiffs' employees on any website". On the last day of trial, United substantially altered the terms of its requested injunction. This seemed to me as highly questionable, since my limited understanding of legal procedure was that a party's pleadings serve as the roadmap they intend to follow at trial. Regardless, judgment was granted in United's favour. A motion for provisional stay of the injunction pending appeal will be heard on January 16, 2017.

Next up is the trial in Federal Court, scheduled for December 5-8, 2016, related to alleged copyright and trademark infringement.

Regardless of the outcome, I intend to keep Untied.com as a voice of criticism against United, documenting the airline's abuse of its passengers and employees, and provide you with a resource for fighting for your rights.

The airlines' cases are meritless; they serve the sole purpose of forcing Cooperstock to spend thousands of dollars in legal costs. The airlines are trying to punish Cooperstock for not complying with their unreasonable demands. Cooperstock has already invested thousands of hours of his time, and dipped into his pockets, to resist United's abusive attempts to dictate what can be published on his website. The legal paperwork alone gives some indication of the scope of effort that this has involved so far.

The site is in full compliance with all applicable legislation. (See the site's disclaimer: the play on United's name and logos is allowed for the purposes of parody and satire.)

Passengers need the contact information to have an effective way of bringing their complaints to the airlines' attention.

There's an important principle at stake here: Once consumer advocates or bloggers give in to legal threats lacking any merit, they are letting the corporations dictate what can and cannot be said about them. That's a very serious risk to free speech.

The 30,000 passenger complaints the site has collected are regularly added to the monthly complaints database where they can be viewed by other readers and customer service representatives of United Airlines.

Starting in January 2002, Untied.com also forwarded complaints to united@ual.com, until United blocked that address in March 2004, at which point, Untied.com provided passengers the option of forwarding their complaints to customercare@united.com. That continued until September 2007, when United Airlines also blocked their customer care email address.

Cooperstock has devoted hundreds of hours every year to help passengers and employees of the airline. He does not profit personally from doing so but is simply trying to help United Airlines improve to become the best airline possible. To this end, he offered to provide a minimal amount of consulting time to United Airlines, free of charge. United Airline's response was to launch two lawsuits against Cooperstock.

Aug.-Oct., 2012: Cooperstock adds prominent disclaimers and a pop-up dialog to the site, making clear that his site is not affiliated with the airline, and discouraging readers from misuse of the work contact information for senior airline employees.

Nov. 19, 2012: United and Continental sue Cooperstock in the Federal Court of Canada and the Superior Court of Quebec.